Two competing disk drive interface standards currently exist within the storage industry: the ATA (Advanced Technology Attachment) standard and the SCSI (Small Computer System Interface) standard. These standards define both the physical interface and the protocol used to communicate with a disk drive. Both standards have evolved over time through the release of new ATA and SCSI specifications. For example, advancements in disk interface technology have recently led to the development of the Serial ATA specification and the Serial Attached SCSI specification, both of which use a common physical and electrical interface.
Because neither the ATA standard nor the SCSI standard has clearly prevailed over the other, the storage industry continues to expend significant resources supporting both standards. For example, a storage integrator wishing to manufacture and sell a disk array system generally must design the system to support either ATA disk drives or SCSI disk drives. If the storage integrator wishes to also provide a disk array solution that supports the other standard (to cater to customer loyalties to a particular standard), it generally must maintain and support a separate product line that uses a different disk array controller and other hardware components.
The present invention seeks to address this and other problems.